When WordPress 3.1 premiered, the new admin bar was probably the most noticeable new feature. Hiding it is as simple as unchecking an option at Users -> Your Profile in your Dashboard, but what if you’ve embraced the admin bar and actually want to add to it?

As you may have expected, there’s already a healthy handful of plugins that add functionality to the admin bar.

Admin Bar ID Menu displays the ID number of the page, post, category, or tag you are looking at in the WordPress Admin Bar.

Debug Bar adds a debug menu to the admin bar that shows query, cache, and other helpful debugging information. When WP_DEBUG is enabled, it also tracks PHP Warnings and Notices to make them easier to find. When SAVEQUERIES is enabled, the mysql queries are tracked and displayed.

Debug Bar Extender adds more features to the debug bar and is mainly aimed at developers who like to debug their code or want to measure runtimes to find glitches in their code. It also allows lookup of variables by adding simple code snippets in your source. (requires the Debug Bar plugin)

Logged Out Admin Bar makes that admin bar always visible even for logged out users. Adds a login button when logged out, the shortlink also displays when available.

Snack Bar adds a snack menu to the admin bar that provides quick access to blog/network admin screens for SuperAdmins.

The problem I have is that I’d like to extend the Admin Bar, but my way – adding links to sites I Admin, for example, removing Appearance. Most of the plugins I’ve seen let you hide or remove the Admin Bar, which might be an indication of what people think of it – for better or worse!

Unfortunately, with there being little in the way of documentation – even Codex just had hide/remove instructions, last time I looked – it’s a case of seeing which plugin does close to what I want, then looking at the code and trying to figure it out myself.

honestly, I HATE, HATE, HATE!!!! the new admin bar. It’s an annoying and useless addition to WordPress. Junk code that I do not understand why they have added it in. And now there are a boat load of plugins to get rid of the thing because so many people don’t like it!

To be truthful I do like having the admin bar hanging over my site when I’m logged in since it allows for easy access back to the admin if I don’t happen to have it open in another tab. It’s a fair, basic, first effort. What I would like to see in the future though is a way to extend it, as Gary says, without having to go into the code to do so. Perhaps a small section could be added to the WP admin that would eventually allow customization of the admin bar (add/delete menus/items, a possible global dashboard where someone could add links to their other sites, etc).

Thinking about it, it would probably be best to wait a bit more and ask this question again? Let some folks get over the OMG CHANGE! syndrome.

About the Author

James

James began using WordPress in 2004. Being new to WordPress (and blogging in general), he quickly found the WordPress Support Forums and basically never left. James currently resides in sunny Southern California, where he enjoys bringing happiness to millions of WordPress.com users.